Jan and the moon

How silly she felt for resenting the sky. And how little it mattered, she supposed.
She doubted even that she ever really did; it’d just been an idea after all. Another morning rushing out the door with Ricky and Little Marky and a flash all at once that perhaps it was resentment that she felt in the pit of her stomach, the pine cone that somersaulted endlessly in her gut when he was off, speeding ever further from their life together.

But now the television and the grainy darkness of another world and the miles between them disappearing when she heard his voice again and his feet and the murky footage and the cigarette in her fingers that seemed to burn down to the nub and then reappear brand new without her knowingly taking another from the packet and the small brittle sentences handed back and forth between each wife and the how are you doings and the I’m fine how are yous and the I’m fine no honestly I am I’m fine I promise I ams and the how did we get heres swirling hazy in the cloud of smoke above them  blowing from one corner of the room to the next casting shadows across their faces that illuminated the doubt instead of hiding it from view.

Outside, the moon was a shining coin in the blackness of everything.  And he was there somewhere, a promise in the sky, a held breath, a beacon.

Her and him, Ricky, Marky and dear, dear Karen, (for all too brief a moment) had once looked up towards the sky, imagining him there amongst the stars, a stone’s throw away from the heavens.  And now there he was, above them all, making his way back home again.